Wide is MUCH better than Tall at Culture/Tourism. What am I missing?

[Xaviarlol]

I've read and heard people say that tall vs wide in culture victory is an open question. I don't understand how it can be questionable that Wide is far better than Tall.

Wide has the following advantages without any penalties:
- Can build more slots for great works
- Can build more culture buildings
- Can build more tourism buildings
- Number of cities has no penalty for Cultural defence, only policy adoption.

Tall has the following advantage(s) over wide:
- Slightly faster great people generation, however this is hampered greatly by lack of great work slots.

Tall has the following major problems:
- Has very limited great work slots
- Has low cultural output overall as they have less cities, therefore less culture producing buildings.

What am I missing? How does Tall compete with Wide in culture?

 

[Matthew.]

Tall has easier time building wonders and working specialist slots. Along with Tall play being easier in general.

 

[Xaviarlol]

Tall has easier time building wonders and working specialist slots. Along with Tall play being easier in general.

Technically - no. This seems like a misconception that a lot of people believe. There is no growth penalty to going wide (except settler build time which is a minimal growth penalty in the span of a full game), so theoretically wide IS tall, unless you have happiness problems. Having more cities doesn't make cities have lower pop, therefore doesn't affect the amount of specialists slots, or wonder production.

Having more cities has the following penalties:
- Very slight happiness decrease from number of cities
- Slight increase in policy costs per city
- Slight penalty to science per city
- Takes a bit longer to build national wonders

None of these significantly affect cultural victory, and the advantages of more cities is huge for culture/tourism output.

 

[Anarchist]

TBH, I have always wondered. I sometimes try to go tall, but there's always that juicy two-lux/two food resource site, just over there.....

 

[ToodleElNoodos]

Lol, I always have those same feelings to.

For culture/tourism, it doesn't seem to really matter anymore. They give you many tools to accomplish tourism that you can go low-pop wide or high-pop tall.

 

[Matthew.]

Happiness sources are limited in the first third of the game, so yes, you certainly will have a growth difference if you are trying to force different playstyles from the start. You cannot have a 15 pop. capital and 12 pop. 2nd and 3rd city while still playing wide.

If your query is simply about whether there is any reason to stay small in the second half of the game, then you are correct. Expanding will open up more great works slots, increase science, etc.

 

[ToodleElNoodos]

Very true. Also, someone going wide can benefit from directing multiple production trade routes to the capital to get those few wonders. The downside for the wide player is more money spent to get the National Visitor Center.

Other downside, you'll need the science to get some important wonders, and time spent building cities with lower populations is time not spent building up the beakers.

But that's alright, you got spies, research agreements, and trade leaks for a reason!

 

[Eagle Pursuit]

Tall has the benefit of high population cities which give you more bang for your buck with science buildings. Very tall civs can even lead in science. Being able to generate more great people gives you great person improvements which give you even more science, production, faith or whatever. Having a science advantage and a production advantage gives them more wonders which have the works slots that they miss from not having a bunch of culture buildings.

Great person buildings can also be leveraged for culture which is then converted into tourism.

If wide is easier than tall for you, you may need to jump up a difficulty level.

 

[neev]

On Emperor level I already have trouble to fill all the Great Works spots of my 4-5ish cities... There are simply not enough artifacts on my landmass, and I don't seem to produce Great Writers/artists/musicians fast enough. I play Fractal/standard size. I can't see how going wide would help me.

 

[Matthew.]

BTW:

Tall has the following advantage(s) over wide:
- Slightly faster great people generation, however this is hampered greatly by lack of great work slots.

This is incorrectly stated, the game has not actually increased GP cost per additional city in years (or ever?). I know way back at release there was talk of it, but the GP cost stays the same regardless of number of cities.

 

[Xaviarlol]

BTW:



This is incorrectly stated, the game has not actually increased GP cost per additional city in years (or ever?). I know way back at release there was talk of it, but the GP cost stays the same regardless of number of cities.

Tall has slightly higher pop, which means more specialists, which means more GP. That's what I meant.

 

[Goat of Death]

Having more cities has the following penalties:
- Very slight happiness decrease from number of cities
- Slight increase in policy costs per city
- Slight penalty to science per city
- Takes a bit longer to build national wonders

None of these significantly affect cultural victory, and the advantages of more cities is huge for culture/tourism output.

In aggregate, all those small penalties add up. Getting through Aesthetics faster means you get the tourism theme boost just a little bit earlier. Also, it's not a big deal to spend a social policy on Exploration just for the Louvre because social policies are cheaper.

You get other civ building boosts earlier like Ironworks to build the wonders with their precious great work slots.

The small penalty per city to happiness means a wide empire won't hit golden ages quite as often.

In a recent tall cultural game I started with 3 core cities, expanded to 4 mid game. I had no problem having space for all my great works. Granted I kept watch on social policy progress of my rivals to make sure I invested in the right cultural wonders with the right work slots at the right time. I waited to build Louvre just because I saw no one took Exploration so it wasn't threatened.

 

[Matthew.]

Tall has slightly higher pop, which means more specialists, which means more GP. That's what I meant.

Got ya. Thought you were talking about that tool-tip that said additional cities increase policy cost and GP cost.

 

[sonicandfffan]

Happiness sources are limited in the first third of the game, so yes, you certainly will have a growth difference if you are trying to force different playstyles from the start. You cannot have a 15 pop. capital and 12 pop. 2nd and 3rd city while still playing wide.

If your query is simply about whether there is any reason to stay small in the second half of the game, then you are correct. Expanding will open up more great works slots, increase science, etc.

Almost. Wide gets a massive science penalty now. In my last game as the Celts the entire world declared war on me (apparently they weren't fans of me conquering my starting continent) so I sent a navy to dispatch some cities and trim away at the runaways on the other continent. Before there was very little reason not to puppet a city if your happiness could take the hit, but now it turns out it makes gaining new techs painfully slow.

 

[DerCivMeister]

Looking for a wide culture victory?

Poland, use your culture per turn yields to finish liberty, use your UA free policies to go down piety. Once you have finished liberty, get a great engineer and use him on the Hagia Sophia. Beeline reformation, and get sacred sites. Try and get religious buildings for both of your follower beliefs (I usually get pagodas for the happiness). You'll want to do a borderline ICS, and if you can get say 12 cities, with 2 religious buildings per city and 2 tourism per building, that's 48 tourism very early on (with a lot of cities early on and the piety beliefs, your early faith can really skyrocket considering there are no penalties for going very wide).

 

[Kwami]

Almost. Wide gets a massive science penalty now. In my last game as the Celts the entire world declared war on me (apparently they weren't fans of me conquering my starting continent) so I sent a navy to dispatch some cities and trim away at the runaways on the other continent. Before there was very little reason not to puppet a city if your happiness could take the hit, but now it turns out it makes gaining new techs painfully slow.

It's only a science penalty if your cities aren't producing enough science to counter it. The penalty is very minor, so it shouldn't be hard to cover it.

 

[Matthew.]

Agreed. It isn't massive. The penalty's only purpose is to slow down late-game science snowballing (runaways). It is extremely easy to break even on science, which in the context of this thread means more tourism with the same tech pace.

A massive 400 science capital would only need around 20 science to break even on a second city. That is a pathetic population of ~8, a library, and university.

 

[DerCivMeister]

Agreed. It isn't massive. The penalty's only purpose is to slow down late-game science snowballing (runaways). It is extremely easy to break even on science, which in the context of this thread means more tourism with the same tech pace.

A massive 400 science capital would only need around 20 science to break even on a second city. That is a pathetic population of ~8, a library, and university.

Indeed. One should not think of that function as a penalty for going wide. Rather, it is simply a balancing tool to prevent ICS from being incredibly broken and overpowered. In most cases, you will more than break even in every city fairly quickly. In no way should this affect your gameplay.

 

[sonicandfffan]

Original post:

Spoiler :

I've not looked at the calculations, but I imagine it's

Total for tech = Base total for tech * 1.05^x

If that's the case then the increase will be exponential which means your sprawl will bring science crawling to a halt when you reach large numbers of cities. it certainly took an age for me to learn techs in my Celts game.

EDIT: According to this topic the formula for science is

Total for tech = Base total for tech * (1 + 0.05*X)

(could somone confirm this?)

In which case, yes, founding new cities will be beneficial eventually (providing they all have a science output to outweigh their cost)

 

[Roxlimn]

The Order Ideology tree is actually extremely ICS-ish. Aside from incredible per-city happiness bonuses (2 from monuments, 1 each from workshop, factory, plants, 1 each from public school, obs, and research labs), you also start at 4 pop per city, and you could grow that to 8 within 10 turns with late game food cargo ships and Maritimes. Half cost Factories and Monuments plus 33% off on building purchases just make it silly.

It's ICS paradise. Very strong for culture wins if you aim to suck the planet dry of artifacts.